I’m hosting a guest post for the book tour for science-fiction novel “Earth Cell”. Enjoy the guest post!

Guest Post

Earth Cell: The Ux-Blood Trilogy, Book I exists because one day I had a notebook, a pen, and some loose ideas spinning around in my head. The year was early 1991 and I was a both a member of the US Navy and a guest in the country of Bahrain. I’m there because Iraq invaded Kuwait a few months earlier, and our President was intent on taking it back. My job as a radiologic technologist had brought me from my duty station at Balboa Naval Hospital in San Diego, CA to this little island off the coast of somewhere in the Gulf, as part of a medical team ready to take care of the anticipated waves of wounded once the land war commenced.

With not a lot to do in my free time, I hand-wrote the first version of Earth Cell. Back then the title was A Man of Many Talents, and the main character’s name was Miles the Immortal. The ‘Immortal’ aspect came because in his prior life, Miles was a criminal fleeing punishment by diving into the ux at a place called the Edge of All. Instead of dying, though, Miles blended with the ux somehow. A Kerrid assault on his mind while he was a warden in training at a little place called Earth Cell opened his consciousness to his immortality. The Qrill invaders forced him to realize just what he could do.

I never intended for the ideas in my head to coalesce into a viable story- I was just trying to get them down on paper in some strange cohesive way. But halfway in or so they did blend together in an unexpected but fascinating way and I realized I had something interesting unfolding on the pages before me. In this very first draft I didn’t yet know how I would have my hero emerge triumphant with so many odds stacked against him. But then another character said something and in that snippet of conversation the climax was formed. Suddenly Earth Cell was looking more and more like a real story.

Earth Cell was my first published work. It was bought by an audiobook company called Books In Motion. They sold their audiobooks to truck stops, much in the way VHS cassettes were sold or rented at video stores. Truckers would rent the stories at one stop and return them at another stop after they’d enjoyed the story. I didn’t sell many copies, but that was the first time I made money off anything I’d written.

In 2009 I blew the dust off Earth Cell and the other two books in the trilogy. I put that original novella and the subsequent novels Witchblood and The Edge of All through a complete reimagining. Miles became Maels Raptori, a long-lived sole survivor of a plague that killed his race. He’s tall, strong, heals quickly, and is able to fly- or puush, as it’s called in the trilogy. His is a unique story. And the trials he suffers in the trilogy, from the Kerrid attack that opens Earth Cell to his final stand against an even worse foe in Witch Warden (the renamed final book in the trilogy) define a life he hopes is worthy of the Archives. This new imagining keeps the general ideas of the original, but takes Maels on a much different path as he tries to hold true to who he is as a Warden of the League of Cell, with Earth as his responsibility. It follows, yet is practically completely different. These difference carry into the new Wtchblood and Witch Warden. (The story within the pages of A Child of Byne, which takes place between Wtchblood and Witch Warden is completely new.) The end result is a fun, thrilling series of stories that had their original in a hand-written off-the-cuff collection of ideas I simply wanted to get out of my mind.

Earth Cell: The Ux-Blood Trilogy

Title: Earth Cell: The Ux-Blood Trillogy (Book One)

Author: Charles Brass

Genre: Science Fiction

For centuries, the League of Cells and the Witches Guild have worked together to maintain order and stability across the overweb’s countless worlds.

Walking the pash of a warden for the League of Cells requires dedication, sacrifice, and devotion, as young Maels Raptori, the last of his kind, has learned. But he’s embraced these hardships, for serving as a warden represents the highest honor one might achieve in his lifetime. For six years under the tutelage of his adopted father and the wardens of Earth Cell, he has prepared to fulfill this dream.

When a powerful intruder nearly seizes control of Earth Cell, Maels is tested beyond anything he has experienced. He finds the strength to defeat the invader, but his trials have only begun. Chaos is spreading across the overweb, engulfing all who stand in its way. The conflict soon breaches Earth Cell. Alone on a world of violence, at the mercy of ruthless captors, Maels discovers his years of dedication and devotion may not be enough. To save Earth, he may be called upon to male the ultimate sacrifice…

Author Bio

Charles Brass works as a CT/MRI technologist in a new stand-alone 24-hour emergency clinic in a small town south of where he lives, some thirty miles west of Minnesota’s Twin Cities. During his six years of active duty service in the United States Navy, he served five months in Bahrain during the first Gulf War. Now, with a BS in Animation under his belt, he has visions of a successful patient education video business filling his days while CT and MRI scans on sick and injured people visiting the local Emergency Center fills his nights.